Monument- and museum-goers in France, whether first-timers, return travelers or residents, are often unaware of what entity owns or operates the sight they’re visiting. Is it the French State? The city or town? The region or department? A private or non-profit organization? The Institut de France?
Does it matter? In many cases, no—you buy your ticket (mostly online these days) and visit. But it’s worth knowing which monuments are operated by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN), the Center for National Monuments, since a pass called Passion Monuments allows for unlimited visits to most of them for a full year for only 45€. (Passion Monuments doesn’t mean that the monuments have passion but that the holder is passionate about visiting them.)
Tasked by the Ministry of Culture and Communication with “conserving, restoring and maintaining the monuments and collections under its responsibility,” the CMN oversees nearly 100 monuments throughout France, 80 of which can be visited with the Passion Monuments pass.
For monument-minded residents and others available to provide an address in France, Passion Monuments is a must-have that will likely pay for itself several times over. There’s also a psychological benefit of having such a pass since you will find yourself revisiting monuments of which you’d previously thought “been-there-done-that” and visiting others that aren’t otherwise on your cultural radar. Not to mention that now you don’t have to buy a ticket when you accompany visiting friends to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
Forty-five euros is about the cost of entering just four monuments. In Paris, the pass covers such (re)visitable monuments as the Arc de Triomphe, the Conciergerie, the Pantheon and the Sainte-Chapelle, as well as the notable newcomer Hôtel de la Marine (entrance for which alone is 17€). In the Paris region, use the pass as an invitation to yourself to visit the suburban sights Saint Denis Basilica-Cathedral and the castle of Vincennes, both easily accessible by metro.
No need to be Paris-centric about this. Pick any region and you’ll find major monuments operated by the CMN that are included on the pass: the chateau of Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire Valley, the castle of Angers, the abbey of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, the castle and ramparts of Carcassonne, the Palais du Tau in Reims, the abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, the megaliths of Locmariaquer in Brittany, the château d’If off the coast of Marseille, the prehistoric site of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in Dordogne, etc. See the full list here. The list itself will make you want to hit the monumental road.
The pass is officially available to residents of France over the age of 26 but CMN isn’t actually asking for proof of residence but simply that you provide an address in France where they can the card, though you can also pick it up at CMN headquarters. So visitors staying long enough (several weeks? several months?) to get good use from the pass might also wish to purchase one in their own name. After ordering the pass online, your card will be sent by post to that address within four days or can be picked up at the CMN’s headquarters in Paris at the Hôtel de Sully, 62 rue Saint-Antoine in the 4th arrondissement (metro Saint-Paul).
The pass isn’t available to those under 26 years of age for the simple reason that entrance to most of the monuments is free to anyone under 18 and to members of the European Union aged 18 to 25. By over 26 is meant anyone past their 26th birthday, so even 26 + 1 day counts as being over 26.
The pass also gives slightly reduced rates for cultural partners, including the chateaux of Chantilly and Fontainebleau in the Paris regions, the Pinault Collection and the Invalides in Paris, and twenty-some other sights elsewhere in France. Three set days per year you can also invite a guest to join you on your cultural excursion free of charge.
(For visitors to the capital staying for one week or less, the Paris Museum Pass remains the best deal for visiting museums and monuments. Other cities and regions also have local passes that are a good deal.)
Timed reservations are now required for most museums and monuments, and for most of those museums and some of those monuments that’s the cases for Passion Monuments and Paris Museum Pass holders as well. So be sure to verify online for each sight that you plan to visit.
© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut